Commentary on the economic , geopolitical and simply fascinating things going on. Served occasionally with a side of snark.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

BitCoin price movement turbulence ( BitCoin crossing price of an ounce of gold got someone's attention ) - whether one sees this as blatant manipulation or not , probably agreement could be found that such huge daily swings hit usage as a currency substitute for USD / Euro or Yen , present challenges for merchants accepting BotCoin and buyers using BitCoin and increase the likelihood of regulatory controls being imposed ....

Hackers Are Attacking Millions Of Computers And Demanding Ransom In Bitcoins

Before you mail holiday gifts to faraway friends and relatives, back up your most important computer files. There's a scary new computer virus called CryptoLocker that was spreading like crazy in the U.K. last month and is now crossing over to infect U.S. computers.

The National Crime Agency in the UK issued an alert last month saying that hackers have targeted "tens of millions" of computers.

CryptoLocker is a form of a virus called "ransomware," meaning hackers do something bad to your computer and then demand money to reverse what they've done. In this case, CryptoLocker encrypts the files on your computer. Then you get a pop-up notice on your computer telling you that you must pay if you want your files back.

Sometimes the hackers want $100, sometimes $300, and sometimes they want up to 2 bitcoins. They ask for bitcoins because they are difficult to trace. Sometimes the virus gives you the option of paying through MoneyPak, a site that offers pre-paid credit cards.

You might get 100 hours to pay. If you pay, maybe your files will be set free. Maybe they won't. Maybe you'll one day be asked to pay again.

Much of the time, the virus comes as an attachment to an email. The attachment is often a fake FedEx and UPS tracking notice, the Homeland Security Cybercrime unit warns. That's particularly dangerous during the holiday shopping season when many people are shipping packages.

( Another big BitCoin robbery - 6 million in Bitcoin snatched from Sheep Marketplace ( or was the theft closer to 44 million ) .. the question is whether this was a hack attack or a scam ? Sheep market was a tell perhaps ? And what is going on at Black Market Reloaded ? )

Silk Road’s rival offline, another black drug mart mulls shutdown

Sheep Marketplace, one of the leading anonymous websites, after Silk Road’s closure, allegedly selling drugs, has gone offline claiming it was robbed of $6 million worth of bitcoins. Another dark net, Black Market Reloaded, announced it may also quit.

The Sheep Marketplace website – which allowed people to anonymously buy narcotics and other illegal items - went offline over the weekend, blaming the theft for the closure. The dark net claimed that it was robbed of 6 million dollars’ worth of bitcoins after one of its random sellers managed to find a bug in the security system.

The website’s administration left a short message for users, which reads:

“We are sorry to say, but we were robbed on Saturday 11/21/2013 by vendor EBOOK101. This vendor found a bug in the system and stole 5400 BTC – your money, our provisions, all was stolen.”

After the FBI closed Silk Road in October - a black market bazaar where illegal goods, including drugs, and other illicit services were bought and sold – the void left was soon filled by a similar website. The Sheep Marketplace quickly grew into a replacement of the popular bazaar. The dark mart managed to keep many users even after Silk Road 2.0 – an exact copy of the closed website – resurrected in November.

However, now users allege that Sheep Market place was just a “scam”. The owners of the site used the theft to justify the closure without returning the bitcoins stored in the market by users, despite assuring that they would redistribute the virtual crypto currency to users’ “emergency addresses”, wrote Forbes.

According to Sheep’s users who have been briskly discussing the topic on Reddit, the black market had been acting strangely for at least a week prior to going offline. First concerns were raised by the administration’s decision to stop allowing vendors to withdraw their bitcoins from the market. Users suspect that the illicit virtual drug mart folded potentially absconding with as much as 44 million dollars. They point to a movement of 39,900 bitcoins visible on Blockhain – a website that tracks bitcoin transactions.

The current largest player in this illegal online business, the Black Market Reloaded (BMR), responded to the developments by announcing that it may also go offline - at least temporarily. The administrator of the site, known as Backopy, said in a forum post the site would not be able to guarantee anonymity to its customers with the influx of new users since Tor – software that hides the identity of the site’s users and owners – is not designed to handle a large user base.

“SR is down, The Black Flag ended up as a scam, Atlantis ended up as a scam and now The Sheep Market follows that dark path. This puts BMR at the edge of the blade. Tor can't support any site to be too big,” Backopy wrote.

The drug market then blocked new registrations, closed access to inactive accounts and announced the site “will remain for a while until the deals and escrow complete, at least most of them, following which it will go to a complete shutdown. Without competition the wisest thing to do is to shut down the market, doing it in a timely and orderly manner,” he said, adding that an alternative would be “to smash the market into tiny bits that could spread the load between nodes and servers, but that would take a while to do”.

According to Forbes, the closure of Sheep and BMR are only the latest events in the “widening crisis” of the dark web drug industry. Earlier, Atlantis market folded citing security reasons.

And that was followed by the arrest of the alleged owner of the infamous Silk Road dark marketplace - Ross Ulbricht - with authorities seizing cocaine and approximately 26,000 bitcoins worth about 4 million dollars. The website was shut down and Ulbricht was accused of engaging in money laundering, drug trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking, and also for placing contracts for six murders.

http://rt.com/business/bitcoin-china-recognition-currency-589/

Bitcoin's largest exchange wants recognition for virtual currency

Bitcoin’s biggest exchange in China – BTC China - has begun discussions with the authorities over regulation of the crypto currency. It hopes more recognition will allow bitcoins to be used to buy goods and services in the country.

BTC China is trying to promote bitcoins in a nation of savers, and has had low-level discussions with regulators, including the People’s Bank of China, the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Bloomberg quotes BTC China Chief Executive Officer Bobby Lee as saying.

Bitcoin is “not on the black list and it’s not on the white list. It’s in the gray area,” Lee said commenting on talks that the virtual currency is strongly connected with illegal trading.

The anonymous virtual currency has been booming, its value having gone up 80–fold in a year to a new recordabove $1000 per unit.

The growth comes despite concerns that regulators may ban trading in the currency, after some bitcoin exchanges were shut down. However, these fears eased after Deputy Central Bank Governor Yi Gang said the Chinese were free to trade bitcoins.

In late October an online trading platform GBL that attracted about 1,000 Chinese investors was shut down.

The normal “life expectancy” of a bitcoin exchange averages 380 days and about half of such exchanges close within a year of their opening, Lee explained.

Last month the US Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs said the digital currency was a “legal means of exchange.”

( Ah - and so it begins ! An attempt to co-opt BitCoin and / or squeeze out all cyber currencies being floated ? Of course a gold backed , government blessed BitCoin might be more attractive at first blush than the cyber variety , but of course as this is blessed by the UK Central Bank , you know who's holding and controlling the gold ! And by holding the gold and issuing regulation to geld this cyber gold backed Bitcoin , Central Banks ( like the UK ) once again would regain control over the potential of BitCoin and other cyber currencies. )

UK Royal Mint Working On Plans To Issue Gold-Backed Physical Bitcoins

The implicit, and ever more explicit, institutional acceptance of the dominant cryptocurrency Bitcoin (we say dominant because as we pointed out last week, there has been an unprecedented spike of digital currencies one can pick and choose from) continues when following the surge in vendors willing to transact in BTC over Thanksgiving, the latest news comes from the birthplace of the modern central bank, the UK, where we learn that none other than the UK Royal Mint has been working on plans since this summer to issue physical Bitcoins in collaboration with the Channel Island of Alderney.

But where the story gets downright surreal is that as the FT reports, the same symbolic Bitcoin token issued by the Royal Mint "would have a gold content – a figure of £500-worth has been proposed – so that holders could conceivably melt and sell the metal if the exchange value of the currency were to collapse." In brief: a perfect, and utterly incomprehensible, fusion of (opposing) hard, soft and digital currencies all rolled into one...

The tiny Channel Island of Alderney is launching an audacious bid to become the first jurisdiction to mint physical Bitcoins, amid a global race to capitalise on the booming virtual currency.

The three-mile long British crown dependency has been working on plans to issue physical Bitcoins in partnership with the UK’s Royal Mint since the summer, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.

It wants to launch itself as the first international centre for Bitcoin transactions by setting up a cluster of services that are compliant with anti-money laundering rules, including exchanges, payment services and a Bitcoin storage vault.

So, convert a digital currency into fiat, issue plastic (or some other material) tokens (appropriately covered in some goldish color) representing "value" because suddenly the currency (supposedly) has the blessing of central banks, and then store them in some basement? Brilliant.

Just how is the UK Royal Mint involved?

The special Bitcoin would be part of the Royal Mint’s commemorative collection, which includes limited edition coins and stamps that are normally bought by collectors. It would have a gold content – a figure of £500-worth has been proposed – so that holders could conceivably melt and sell the metal if the exchange value of the currency were to collapse.

Wait, what: gold-backed Bitcoins? If so, that would be truly revolutionary because for the first time a Treasury (and by implication, a central bank) is effectively hinting that not only are they willing to fiat-ize Bitcoin, but also have the symbolic BTC token (after all Bitcoin is a digital currency by definition) serve as a commodity trap. Because once enough gold-backed physical Bitcoins are locked up in some basement in the UK, who has the master key? That's a rhetorical question by the way.

Naturally, the UK Mint is not quite eager to disclose full details while the plan is still being finalized:

David Janczewski, head of new business at the Royal Mint confirmed it had been approached by the finance minister of Alderney to “explore the possibility of manufacturing a physical commemorative coin with a Bitcoin theme”.

“Discussions have not progressed further and at this stage it remains nothing more than a concept,” he added.

But the controversy around Bitcoin has made the Alderney plan a sensitive subject. The Treasury, which owns the Royal Mint, declined to comment on the plans. George Osborne, the British chancellor, also holds the title of Master of the Mint.

Since there is understandably much confusion over what the minting process of a physical gold-backed token representing a digital currency, with the backing of an entity that does the bidding of an issuer that only believes in fiat currencies, here is the FT with the blow by blow.

An independent company will provide the Bitcoins. If the price plunged, neither Alderney nor the Royal Mint would lose anything.

The company would put the Bitcoins in an escrow account at an agreed price.

Meanwhile, the Royal Mint would take customers’ orders for its minted Bitcoins and receive money from those coin sales.

The virtual Bitcoins backing the physical coins would be held in digital storage facilities by Alderney.

The Mint would issue the commemorative Bitcoin, paying for the value of the gold content itself. Alderney would receive royalties from sales of the coins.

Coins could be redeemed for sterling at any point in Alderney for the price of a Bitcoin on that day.

All we can do at this point is sit back in wonder and amusement as we hit the pinnacle of monetary confusion, whereby the UK Royal Mint, willing to take full advantage of retail confusion, will mix hard, soft and digital currency, and produce a product... that is locked away on an island that belongs to the UK.

And all we can say is "brilliant", because if there is a better plan to meld the sentiment of both hard and digital-currency (and hence, anti-fiat) advocates, and to redirect it in a "fiat" pathway, we have yet to hear it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-01/bitcoin-plunges-bear-market

Bitcoin Plunges Into Bear Market

UPDATE: BTC has rallied 26% off its lows in the last 55 minutes - with extreme volumes

From it's gold-matching highs at $1242 on Thursday night, the price of Bitcoin has collapsed over $400 (32%) to $840 on heavy volume. Of course, this is only a one-week low for the exuberant digital currency but still a significant plunge (as its smaller brethren Litecoin has collapsed 51% from its highs). Interestingly, this drops the price of Bitcoin in USD below the 'arb'-based price of Bitcoin in China ($965). It seems, all coincidence aside, that the BIS infamous plunge-protection-team has been re-trained...

NEW DELHI: As Bitcoin becomes more popular day by day, regulators are getting worried about potential money laundering risks associated with this digital currency and its possible misuse by fraudsters to lure gullible investors into 'e-ponzi' schemes.

Adding to the challenges posed by Bitcoin before the regulators, this e-currency is already being accepted by some online retailers in countries like the US, China and a few others, for various purposes including pizza delivery.

Hardly three years into existence, Bitcoin has already become the world's most expensive currency with a per unit value of over $1,000 or about Rs 63,000, and it is posing all possible questions to regulators in India -- whether to regulate it or not, who should do it, what should be the norms, how to regulate etc.

Those looking at this new phenomenon include almost all financial sector regulators as also agencies mandated to handle economic crimes, such as RBI, Sebi and various agencies under the Finance Ministry, a senior official said.

When contacted, an RBI spokesperson said, "As of now we don't regulate bitcoins, but are observing developments."

While regulators are tight-lipped about their plan of action, a senior official said that one possible way forward can be following the US, where authorities have decided to subject bitcoins to money laundering rules applicable to all other financial transactions in the country.

Regulators are also looking into claims being made by some entities of being registered bitcoin exchange providers, although they might have merely registered as a company with the Registrar of Companies with some generic business purposes.

Sources said that regulatory and enforcement authorities here are very much concerned about potential money laundering risks emanating from growing use of bitcoins. To make the things worse, this virtual currency has become the latest tool adopted by fraudsters who are promoting bitcoins as the next big investment products with unlimited returns.

A few complaints have already poured in about bitcoins being used by some operators in certain new-age and e-versions of multi-level marketing or ponzi schemes.

Regulators fear that this new phenomenon can give rise to a new kind of illegal investment schemes that could be very difficult to track and clamp down. This is because there is almost zero physical activity when dealing in bitcoins and nearly all transactions take place in the electronic format.

Being an 'open source' product, bitcoin can be mined by anyone through a complex computer software through solutions shared on an entire network, although the process is complex and such 'mining' can be done only on very powerful computers.

The huge surge in the valuation of bitcoins, from little over $200 to well past $1,000 during the last month, has certainly added to their investment profile and people are also getting attracted to it in India, which already has a few significant players offering bitcoin exchange service online in lieu of rupee or other currencies.

The collapse of another digital currency operator Liberty Reserve after charges of money laundering, as also the fall of a few other smaller digital currency exchanges in different parts of the world, have added to the concerns of regulators.

The US authorities have charged Liberty Reserve of operating as a global banker for criminals and of laundering over USD six billion of crime proceeds. Incorporated in 2006, it had over a million users, including about one-fifth in the US.

Bitcoin came into existence in 2009 and the current number of bitcoin units generated so far stands at about 12 million. However, only a small number of bitcoins are being used for real commercial and retail purposes and a vast majority of exchanges are taking place due to speculative investment purposes.

Besides, the US authorities have already come across a few cases of bitcoin being used for illegal activities, including one case of payments for illicit drugs.